My computer says my hard drive is failing.

[Blackhawk748]

As the title said, my computer just started yelling at me today that it detects a problem with my Harddrive. Initially i thought this was because it was near capacity, so i deleted some stuff. Well, now its still yelling at me and its getting annoying. Ive noticed no performance issues and i store nothing on this hard drive (other than basic OS stuff) as i have a 2 TB hardrive that has all of my actual stuff on it, so im not concerned about data loss, however, this constant warning is driving me nuts and it wont actually tell me whats wrong, so what should i do?

[Aotrs Commander]

Replace it.

Replace it with as much expediency pending funds as you can, since this is a sign the HDD is on its way out and its better to do it while your PC still works than have a delay when it keels over1. (You, at least, have got your data elsewhere, which is good.)

I unlive in fear of HDD failures, I would rather ANY other pieces of equipment go out than that. (And I'm paranoid about backing up.)



You can get a small Solid State drive for fairly cheap, and, if by your implication, you're only using it for your OS, might be worth the investment. (And if you can manage to slip the new one in while the old one is there, you may be able to clone it across and save a fair bit of hassle.)

(I'm waiting up upgrade to SSD when the prices for large ones come down. No point getting one now when my HDD is relatively new and the OS gains are fairly minimal. (Boot-time is essentially irrelevant, since outside of Faffing With Drivers or something, the PC gets turned on eight times a week and stays on all day.)




1In our case, the PC and the internet is basically as important as the car - in my case, it's essentially to my technical day-job.

[Peelee]

Seconding replacement. Hard drives are cheap, easy to find, and easy to replace. You store stuff on a separate drive, so get an SSD boot drive and call it a day. Easy peasy.

[Gnoman]

The error you are getting is that the hard drive is failing to read or write from certain sectors. Once it fails this a certain number of times, Windows starts to be concerned, and duly notifies you of the problem, ideally before you get data corruption.

As both of the other replys helpfully explain, this essentially amounts to "DANGER. THIS HARD DRIVE IS PROBABLY ABOUT TO DIE. REPLACE IT IMMEDIATELY." I would strongly suggest that you follow this advice, as waiting will almost certainly leave you without a system for a while (if you order a replacement online), or force you to pick a suboptimal deal (if you go to a shop). Ordering now, or taking the time to comparison shop, will save you a great deal of time and hassle.

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[Blackhawk748]

Ok, glad to see i have some time to replace it yet, so i'll get on that now.

[thracian]

I like CrystalDiskInfo for checking SMART stats on a hard drive (will helpfully give a Green/Yellow/Red drive health indicator for most mainstream drive models), but if you're already getting errors, yes, replace.

[jayem]

I would strongly suggest that you follow this advice, as waiting will almost certainly leave you without a system for a while (if you order a replacement online), or force you to pick a suboptimal deal (if you go to a shop). Ordering now, or taking the time to comparison shop, will save you a great deal of time and hassle.

Plus at that point you still have a few lives left on the hard drive, so when you suddenly realize there was something on it...